“Come on in,” says Lincoln.
The Earl of Striga enters the room. His long purple robes have the Striga pentagram embroidered on the front. As he walks forward, his long gray deadlocks sway behind him. His spell achievement beads click and clack, showing off all his magical knowledge. In other words, the Earl of Striga is a badass warlock. “How can I be of service, Your Highness?” He turns to me, and the movement makes the beads in his hair jingle. “Great Scala.”
Lincoln folds his arms over his chest. “I fear that someone’s been in here and taken parchments without permission.”
The Earl’s mouth falls open. “I’ll investigate immediately, Your Highness.” He closes his eyes and murmurs a spell. Circles of purple flame appear around his body. They have a special magic name—spell circles—but I think of them as supernatural Hula-Hoops. They slowly shift up and down his torso.
My brows rise. There must be a half-dozen Hula-Hoop thingies here. This is a pretty serious casting.
At last, the Earl opens his eyes again. Beads of sweat line his forehead. “The wards here are broken. Someone came into your study, perhaps a month ago. They took some documents.” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe they broke through all my protective spells.”
“Do you know who it was?” I ask.
“That I can’t determine,” says the Earl. “I’ll need to bring in some help. Perhaps Elder Faustina could be summoned.”
“I don’t think you need to bother,” I say. “There aren’t a lot of folks that can break through your spells. And one month ago, Lady Adair was running around Antrum with Armageddon under her skin. Using his power, she could easily have broken in here.”
The Earl steps back. “That couldn’t have happened. You need to learn about our ways, Great Scala.”
Puh-lease. I can’t believe he’s saying this to me. Especially after what happened with Lady Adair.
“Excuse me, but weren’t you at the temple in Antrum when Lady Adair turned into freaking Armageddon before our eyes? We’ve got solid intelligence that Armageddon has a plan that involves the Wheeler Institute. Now, we don’t know the specifics of that scheme. Even so, I’ll bet it’s about one thing: getting the King of Hell back into Antrum. He’s not a complex demon. All he wants is to kill me and my family, and he’ll never stop trying.” It’s getting a little annoying, actually.
The Earl sighs. “I suppose you’re right.”
Damn right, I’m right. “There’s something else we’d like you to do.”
“Anything.” The Earl looks happy to move on from the whole Armageddon-in-Antrum convo.
“Can you tell us where the Wheeler Institute is located on Earth?”
A small smile rounds the Earl’s mouth. “Yes, easily.” He closes his eyes, speaks a few words, and opens them again. “There are more than one hundred Wheeler Institutes on Earth.”
“Are there any located in Nova Scotia?” asks Lincoln.
“Yes, in Boulders Beach.”
I fist-pump the air. “Hells, yeah!” Finally, we’re getting somewhere.
“Are you pleased for your father, Great Scala?” asks the Earl.
Lincoln frowns. “What do you mean?”
“That particular Wheeler Institute has a Heavenly patron, the archangel Xavier. He’s the father of the great scala, isn’t he?”
My eyes almost bug out of my head. “Oh, yeah. Xavier is totally my dad. But he’s never mentioned being the patron of any school.” That said, a ton of places have him as a patron-whatever. Not many of them register on his archangel radar, though. Dad’s picky.
Lincoln steps to my side and wraps his arm around my waist. His face positively beams with excitement. “This is excellent news, Lucas.”
“It is?” The Earl looks downright flummoxed.
“Yes, we need to get to the Wheeler Institute in Boulders Beach.”
“I could help you search for more documents here,” offers the Earl.
“Documents won’t cut it,” I say.
“Someone’s gone through a lot of trouble to make those parchments disappear,” adds Lincoln. “They won’t be easy to recover, and we don’t have a lot of time to gather evidence from the school.”
“And we want it,” I add.
Here’s the deal. Sure, we have the testimony from Mrs. Pomplemousse. However, that’s only one direct implication of Aldred’s alliance with Armageddon. We’d hoped to have more testimony, but when push came to shove, everyone seemed to forget everything, mostly because Aldred was blackmailing them. And evidence from friends and family isn’t admissible. Stupid thrax rules. Long story short, if there’s evidence on Earth, we’re getting it.
The Earl’s eyes widen. “Evidence? You mean against the Earl of Acca?”
“Yes,” I answer. “We think this school could be related to Aldred’s alliance with Armageddon.”